Betsy Bird's Blog, page 69

A First Time for Everything: Dan Santat Discusses His Graphic Memoir, How Memories Change, and the Best Flavor of Fanta

Dan Santat

Here are the facts of the matter as I am given to understand them:

1. I once was given the chance to do a magnificent picture book alongside Dan Santat called The Great Santa Stakeout and it was, to be perfectly honest, as good as anything I could have hoped for.2. More recently I was also given the chance to interview Dan about his upcoming graphic novel A First Time for Everything. A book that, let us all be frank, has been advertised widely in every single PW newsletter/indep...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Mitten by Jan Brett

Since the entire premise of my podcast with my sister is to take well-known books and determine whether or not they continue to deserve their “classic” status, it probably behooves me to do a couple books everyone has actually heard of. And since the last book I did was, at best, obscure and, at worst, completely forgotten, I figured today we should go all in and do something out-and-out famous. To my surprise, we’ve never tackled a Jan Brett book before. That said, I have to admit that it’s...

Review of the Day: Nearer My Freedom: The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano by Himself created by Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge

Nearer My Freedom: The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano by Himself
Created by Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge
Zest Books (an imprint of Lerner)
$17.99
ISBN: 9781728464077
Ages 12 and up
On shelves March 7th

Remember a couple years ago when the words “primary sources” were uttered with a near reverence in classrooms across the country? This occurred during the initial rise of the CORE Curriculum, and all of a sudden teachers everywhere were mesmerized by the prospect of “first-hand accounts of...

“A game changer!” Dive Into the NCTE’s Position Statement on the Role of Nonfiction Literature

photo: Melissa Stewart

Did you miss it when it was released? Do you know how important it is?

Wait. Stop. Let me start in another way.

In a nation, where increasingly people ban and forbid the reading of children’s books that dare to tell factual information, can you think of a better time for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) to make a bold, declarative statement on the role of nonfiction literature in the lives of our children? Of course you can’t. We’ve never faced s...

Shared Rituals and Easter Sugar Lambs: A Dual Interview About My Baba’s Garden Dual with Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith

Recently I was speaking to a group of students at the Butler Children’s Literature Center at Dominican University about the upcoming Bologna Children’s Books Fair. We’ll all be traveling there and I was giving them some advice upon arrival.

“Oh! And do not miss the panel of judges discussing how they came to decide on this year’s winners of the Illustrators Exhibition. Sydney Smith from Canada is one of them!”

At this point the entire conversation turned into a recounting of Mr. Smith’s ...

Twin Stars, One Light: A Fire of Stars Dual Interview with Kirsten Larson and Katherine Roy

Buzz. How the heck do you build buzz when you have a new book out?

Your publisher will do a bit of work on their end, but the bigger they are the less time they’ll have for you individually. You can personally send your book to all the book award and state committees you can name. You can go on blog tours. You can haunt the local bookstore and plead for a signing. Maybe even hit up the local radio station. You can go on podcasts. Talk to newspaper reporters. There are as many different ways t...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: A Valentine for Norman Noggs by Valiska Gregory, ill. Marsha Winborn

Librarians, if you’re anything like me, then, when the time is right, every year you trot out the same dang Valentine’s Day books that are in the Holiday section of your library. All the newer books go out first, leaving behind the stuff that came out in, oh say, 1999. This is the rare example of a book that I didn’t know bupkiss about. I didn’t know anything about the creators or the title itself, so we’re just jumping in because a quick read yielded strange thoughts. In today’s discussion ...

Cover Reveal and Q&A: Author DaVaun Sanders Reveals All About His New Series Launch, Keynan Masters and the Peerless Magic Crew

Sometimes it’s a title. Sometimes the cover itself. Sometimes it’s a little more ineffable than that. A certain je ne sais quoi. Who knows why I think some books would make better cover reveals than others, but by gum today’s book got me excited. Maybe, just maybe, it was the description of the plot. See what you think:

“Keynan Masters doesn’t know the truth about Peerless Academy. He thinks it’s just a fancy art school that can’t teach him anything he doesn’t already know (how to write fire ...

Review of the Day: The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri, ill. Daniel Miyares

The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams
By Daniel Nayeri
Illustrated by Daniel Miyares
$21.99
ISBN: 9781646143030
Ages 10 and up
On shelves March 7th

Come over here. I want to walk you through a first sentence.

You know, they often say that the first sentence of a book should really be a doozy and grab the reader’s attention, but most of the time authors sort of dash it off. They prefer to make the first page or the first chapter momentous and memorable, and I understand the ins...

Kwame Alexander + Marc Tyler Nobleman + A Web Series for Kids. I Talk Songbook with MTN

This is interesting. Two men. Both involved in the children’s literature world, but one working primarily in picture books, many about comic book creators and the other making television shows, penning Caldecott and Newbery Award winners, etc. Put ’em both together and you get . . . Songbook.

Or, put another way, here’s the press release from Marc himself:

Thanks to friend/fellow author Kwame Alexander and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, I am honored to ann...